Apple Releases macOS Monterey 12.5.1 With Security Updates

[gctwnl]

Curious about something: This update had an Apple Studio Display firmware update that downloaded and installed first before updating the OS on my MBP 14 M1 Max. I've not seen any mention of this studio firmware update and I already had the firmware update installed that Apple pushed out a few months ago for the display. Anyone know what this additional new display firmware update addresses?

No. But my guess is that they have problems in their thunderbolt stack (which by the way apparently are still not all fixed) and that fixing these required a differente way to drive the studio display, requiring a studio display firmware update as well.

 

[toke lahti]

Does this .1 break something for someone?
Eg. Photostream, like in the 12.3?

 

[furd]

That setup are not supported. So… sucks to be you and stop whining.

I keep seeing this claim but have had absolutely no luck finding ANY formal confirmation of this statement. And, since Apple continues to allow you to set you machine up this way by allowing you to put your home directory wherever you like, I remain baffled as to why this claim keeps cropping up.

Granted, the ongoing accumulation of settings in the system Library folder seems to make this a necessity anymore (since so many applications seem to expect that the user Library and the System Library are on the same Volume), so I've resigned myself to constructing a "dog's breakfast" file system to accommodate this OS trend, but without a formal statement of this requirement from Apple, I have been unable to assemble a credible case to make to my Apple Service people.

I would REALLY appreciate it if you could direct me, because it's been a painful, fruitless hunt for me -- something I really hate to have left hanging!

 

[mhurron]

I keep seeing this claim but have had absolutely no luck finding ANY formal confirmation of this statement. And, since Apple continues to allow you to set you machine up this way by allowing you to put your home directory wherever you like, I remain baffled as to why this claim keeps cropping up.

Granted, the ongoing accumulation of settings in the system Library folder seems to make this a necessity anymore (since so many applications seem to expect that the user Library and the System Library are on the same Volume), so I've resigned myself to constructing a "dog's breakfast" file system to accommodate this OS trend, but without a formal statement of this requirement from Apple, I have been unable to assemble a credible case to make to my Apple Service people.

I would REALLY appreciate it if you could direct me, because it's been a painful, fruitless hunt for me -- something I really hate to have left hanging!

You have to love this. If Apple prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, it's a travesty they don't let you set your computer up the way you want. If they let you with a bunch of warnings than it must be a supported configuration and why didn't they test this thing they told me not to do.

The very dialog where you make the change to the home folders location:

Allowed and supported are not the same thing. You are free to shoot yourself in the foot, you are on your own if you do.

 

[furd]

Glad to be able to brighten your day!

Of course, nothing here says that the configuration is unsupported, so I don't understand how this is "shooting myself in the foot" -- at least no more than if I decide to reformat my boot drive. All it indicates is the perfectly understandable "feature" that, if your external drive is not found, you won't be able to login.

But, as I said, I'm glad you've gotten your daily ego boost!

 

[pp_amorim]

This update just killed my new M1 iMac.. stuck in a reboot loop, one time it went into recovery mode and was not able to recover..
Now figuring out how to revive my $2500 paperweight..

Thank you for warning. Doing a time machine backup before the update.

 

[furd]

FWIW, it updated with no issues on my Intel Mac mini (2018) machine in the "unsupported" configuration

 

[DaveWil]

Showing on my Intel Mac but not on Apple Silicon.

Same

 

[Icy1007]

2017 27” iMac - I would install the update if the update wasn’t bugged. Constantly tells me the installer is damaged when I try or some other generic error.

I’ve trued App Store, Safe Mode, Terminal, Recovery Mode, downloading the installer on another Mac, putting on a flash drive, and installing that way… nothing is working.

“An error occurred loading the update”

I can’t backup my files using Time Machine because it just gives me a generic error message.

I’m on macOS 12.5 currently. That update surprisingly didn’t have any issues.

No issues updating on my 2021 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro I use for work.

 

[gank41]

In Safari 15.6.1 NONE of my Website settings remain in place. In fact, all settings for any web site I go to are either not saved at all in Preferences or things like "Allow Downloads" stay at "Ask" and revert immediately back to "Ask" if I try to change them. Some Extensions need to be enabled EACH time I start Safari after quitting.

I'm also finding some apps like Parallels are now requiring me to reboot on each use to enable a security extension. Not only that, but a number of items listed under Security & Privacy/Privacy go disabled after each reboot. I'm not 100% sure yet but it seems some of these items are becoming disabled at some point while logged in, and then I'm just enabling them after a reboot.

What a Sh*t Show.

 

[MajorFubar]

Dunno about you lot but the issue I had on my Mac Studio where it would periodically drop then reconnect USB-A or -C devices (mysteriously except the monitor) got worse after 12.5.1. I'm hoping it's something that gets inherently fixed with Ventura. I am not hopeful, considering Ventura seems superficially to be the same unsteady Jenga tower as Monterey but with another couple of storeys of bricks on top.

 

[maccan]

This update has completely reset my user account. My home folders are on an external drive, basically it has made my user account a 'new' one with no file associations / libraries. It doesn't know where anything is. Thanks apple for a few hours work!

Have a similar setup. I have an administration account on the boot volume and the regular user-account on a different HD mounted under /Volumes/home

After the update, Login into my regular user-account failed. I logged into the administrator account, fired up Terminal.app and found out, that the update renamed the /Volumes/home to /Volumes/home 1.
Another empty mount-point /Volumes/home was generated (probably by the failed login attempt). I just deleted this and renamed /Volumes/home 1 back to /Volumes/home.
After this, everything was ok. No need to waste hours employing backups...

Using different disks for regular user-accounts is perfectly fine with macOS and has lots of advantages.

Best regards

Best regards

 

[zorinlynx]

This update has completely reset my user account. My home folders are on an external drive, basically it has made my user account a 'new' one with no file associations / libraries. It doesn't know where anything is. Thanks apple for a few hours work!

I saw this response and had to say something; I felt a helpful response to counteract the unpleasant fellow who also responded was warranted.

It's a bad idea to have your user account on an external drive. Believe me, I've tried using this configuration, and it's just problematic all around.

The best way to do it is to have your user account on the boot drive, then put "large" things that need a lot of space on your external drive. Like, you can put your media libraries there, your photos library, and so on. Not only is this more reliable long term, but if the external drive fails you can still use your computer until you restore the data from backup.

 

[gank41]

I saw this response and had to say something; I felt a helpful response to counteract the unpleasant fellow who also responded was warranted.

It's a bad idea to have your user account on an external drive. Believe me, I've tried using this configuration, and it's just problematic all around.

The best way to do it is to have your user account on the boot drive, then put "large" things that need a lot of space on your external drive. Like, you can put your media libraries there, your photos library, and so on. Not only is this more reliable long term, but if the external drive fails you can still use your computer until you restore the data from backup.

I’ve created Alias shortcuts to various folders on external drives. That way I can keep a minimal of stuff on my boot drive and then a bunch of stuff on external drives.

 

[aircanman]

That setup are not supported. So… sucks to be you and stop whining.

Haha it is supported.

 

[maccan]

I saw this response and had to say something; I felt a helpful response to counteract the unpleasant fellow who also responded was warranted.

It's a bad idea to have your user account on an external drive. Believe me, I've tried using this configuration, and it's just problematic all around.

The best way to do it is to have your user account on the boot drive, then put "large" things that need a lot of space on your external drive. Like, you can put your media libraries there, your photos library, and so on. Not only is this more reliable long term, but if the external drive fails you can still use your computer until you restore the data from backup.

Using external volumes on macOS can be problematic in general. In some rare occasions, it may happen that the mount point of the external disk (let's call it ext) located in /Volumes is not deleted when the disk is unmounted. If the OS tries to mount the disk again, it will create a different mount point with name "ext 1" because "ext" is already there. If some software tries to access the data through the 'memorized' path "/Volumes/ext" it will fail.

Because of this, if you want to separate the user account from the system it is crucial to have an administrator account still on the boot volume. Because of security, your regular user account should not have administrator privileges anyway. So you can always log into the system and clean the invalid mount point. In fact with respect to the mount point problematic, there is not that much of a difference between scattering large data junks around external disks and have the (regular) user account located on an external disk.

Apart from the mount point incidence (I had it once in the last 8 years), I've never observed any problems due to externally located user accounts. Can you more specifically tell what was just problematic all around in your case?

 

[aircanman]

Using external volumes on macOS can be problematic in general. In some rare occasions, it may happen that the mount point of the external disk (let's call it ext) located in /Volumes is not deleted when the disk is unmounted. If the OS tries to mount the disk again, it will create a different mount point with name "ext 1" because "ext" is already there. If some software tries to access the data through the 'memorized' path "/Volumes/ext" it will fail.

Because of this, if you want to separate the user account from the system it is crucial to have an administrator account still on the boot volume. Because of security, your regular user account should not have administrator privileges anyway. So you can always log into the system and clean the invalid mount point. In fact with respect to the mount point problematic, there is not that much of a difference between scattering large data junks around external disks and have the (regular) user account located on an external disk.

Apart from the mount point incidence (I had it once in the last 8 years), I've never observed any problems due to externally located user accounts. Can you more specifically tell what was just problematic all around in your case?

It was originally my issue, unfortunately I can only say what happened to me. I used the user account settings to change the path of the home folder, the Mac worked perfectly until the last 2 updates, both times it seemed to remove any links to the home folder being on the external drive. It surprises me that this sort of thing does not come up often as many macs will be sold with the lower storage specs, which is barely enough to store anything. My iPhone backup would be too much for my Mac Mini, I just can't justify spending twice the price of the computer to get more storage, it's not enough for the experience Apple offers.

 

[maccan]

It was originally my issue, unfortunately I can only say what happened to me. I used the user account settings to change the path of the home folder, the Mac worked perfectly until the last 2 updates, both times it seemed to remove any links to the home folder being on the external drive. It surprises me that this sort of thing does not come up often as many macs will be sold with the lower storage specs, which is barely enough to store anything. My iPhone backup would be too much for my Mac Mini, I just can't justify spending twice the price of the computer to get more storage, it's not enough for the experience Apple offers.

If you create a user account on the boot volume for administrative purpose only, you will be save. Since you youse this admin account for administration only, there will be no data accumulation there.
On your regular account, you can remove the "Allow user to administer this computer" in the user account settings.

 

[aircanman]

If you create a user account on the boot volume for administrative purpose only, you will be save. Since you youse this admin account for administration only, there will be no data accumulation there.
On your regular account, you can remove the "Allow user to administer this computer" in the user account settings.

I thought this, but my worry was if I updated again on the admin account would it cause an issue anyway. I have moved over to Symlinks now which seem to be working, still not ideal but safer I think.

 

[furd]

Using external volumes on macOS can be problematic in general. In some rare occasions, it may happen that the mount point of the external disk (let's call it ext) located in /Volumes is not deleted when the disk is unmounted. If the OS tries to mount the disk again, it will create a different mount point with name "ext 1" because "ext" is already there. If some software tries to access the data through the 'memorized' path "/Volumes/ext" it will fail.

Because of this, if you want to separate the user account from the system it is crucial to have an administrator account still on the boot volume. Because of security, your regular user account should not have administrator privileges anyway. So you can always log into the system and clean the invalid mount point. In fact with respect to the mount point problematic, there is not that much of a difference between scattering large data junks around external disks and have the (regular) user account located on an external disk.

Apart from the mount point incidence (I had it once in the last 8 years), I've never observed any problems due to externally located user accounts. Can you more specifically tell what was just problematic all around in your case?

(Sorry this has taken so long for me to respond)

Operationally, the biggest headache has been the fact that MailBundles (extensions offering access into Mail's innards) have to be located by hand. Having a home directory that does not coincide with the boot drive seems not to be a part of the way that the MailBundle installation/APIs think. Similarly, some driver installs end up making strong assumptions that are confused when home and boot drives are not the same.

But, it also seems to be the case that an upgrade to Ventura is the strongest signal yet that Apple is trying to get us to buy big SSDs; as far as I can tell, while my setup was "carried over" to Ventura, the "Users and Groups" dialogs no longer offer the possibility of making the home drive anywhere but the boot drive; if there's a way to do it, it's going to be one of those things that you only get to by knowing the magic shift/control/command key combinations to reveal the advanced dialog.

So, I've been working on making plans for my next machine, rather than hoping I can remedy the situation here. Ventura seems to make this something that you just can't do anymore.

 

[maccan]

(Sorry this has taken so long for me to respond)

Operationally, the biggest headache has been the fact that MailBundles (extensions offering access into Mail's innards) have to be located by hand. Having a home directory that does not coincide with the boot drive seems not to be a part of the way that the MailBundle installation/APIs think. Similarly, some driver installs end up making strong assumptions that are confused when home and boot drives are not the same.

But, it also seems to be the case that an upgrade to Ventura is the strongest signal yet that Apple is trying to get us to buy big SSDs; as far as I can tell, while my setup was "carried over" to Ventura, the "Users and Groups" dialogs no longer offer the possibility of making the home drive anywhere but the boot drive; if there's a way to do it, it's going to be one of those things that you only get to by knowing the magic shift/control/command key combinations to reveal the advanced dialog.

So, I've been working on making plans for my next machine, rather than hoping I can remedy the situation here. Ventura seems to make this something that you just can't do anymore.

I'm still running Monterey. Hope somebody finds a way to revive this feature...

 

[maccan]

(Sorry this has taken so long for me to respond)

Operationally, the biggest headache has been the fact that MailBundles (extensions offering access into Mail's innards) have to be located by hand. Having a home directory that does not coincide with the boot drive seems not to be a part of the way that the MailBundle installation/APIs think. Similarly, some driver installs end up making strong assumptions that are confused when home and boot drives are not the same.

But, it also seems to be the case that an upgrade to Ventura is the strongest signal yet that Apple is trying to get us to buy big SSDs; as far as I can tell, while my setup was "carried over" to Ventura, the "Users and Groups" dialogs no longer offer the possibility of making the home drive anywhere but the boot drive; if there's a way to do it, it's going to be one of those things that you only get to by knowing the magic shift/control/command key combinations to reveal the advanced dialog.

So, I've been working on making plans for my next machine, rather than hoping I can remedy the situation here. Ventura seems to make this something that you just can't do anymore.

Could it be that you only have an account with administrator privileges?
Maybe this has to stay on the boot volume. Can you try if the option is available for an account without admin privileges?

 

[maccan]

I'm still running Monterey. Hope somebody finds a way to revive this feature...

I'm still running Monterey. Hope somebody finds a way to revive this feature...

(Sorry this has taken so long for me to respond)

Operationally, the biggest headache has been the fact that MailBundles (extensions offering access into Mail's innards) have to be located by hand. Having a home directory that does not coincide with the boot drive seems not to be a part of the way that the MailBundle installation/APIs think. Similarly, some driver installs end up making strong assumptions that are confused when home and boot drives are not the same.

But, it also seems to be the case that an upgrade to Ventura is the strongest signal yet that Apple is trying to get us to buy big SSDs; as far as I can tell, while my setup was "carried over" to Ventura, the "Users and Groups" dialogs no longer offer the possibility of making the home drive anywhere but the boot drive; if there's a way to do it, it's going to be one of those things that you only get to by knowing the magic shift/control/command key combinations to reveal the advanced dialog.

So, I've been working on making plans for my next machine, rather than hoping I can remedy the situation here. Ventura seems to make this something that you just can't do anymore.

I just updated from Monterey 12.6.1 -> Ventura 13.1
The possibility of making the home drive anywhere is still there. So, concerning this, everything is the same as in previous OS releases.

The upgrade went through without any problem! I think it is IMPORTANT to start the update from an admin account which IS located at the boot volume. I have one just for this purpose. Never use it for anything else. No data is accumulated there. The reason to do it this way is obvious: After the upgrade, the machine boots and automatically brings you back to the login of the user from which the upgrade process was initiated. If you only have your account residing on a different partition and somehow its path is messed (because its mounpoint was not properly cleared during the upgrade shutdown-process), you are already screwed up.

If you have your admin account on the boot volume, after the upgrade has finished, you will be presented with the login screen of the admin user and can safely log in. Then you can check in /Volumes if your home-partition is properly mounted. i.e. there is no double entry with a " 1" added due to improper mountpoint handling during the upgrade shutdown process. If so, you can immediately fix it! You can also check in "Users and Groups" -> "Advanced Option..." that the path of your working user account on another disk/partition is unchanged. I never experienced that this path was messed up - but just to be sure.
After this checks, logout from your admin account and use your working account on the dedicated partition/disk.

Best regards